eLab eXchange members were too optimistic in their predictions for the Facebook market.
The eLab eXchange predicted that Facebook traffic would grow 25% from October to December 2007. But Facebook traffic, measured in terms of growth of unique visitors from Nielsen Online's NetView audience measurement service, increased only 16%.
This represents a significant slowdown in traffic for the popular social networking site. Last year, Facebook grew 51% from October to December 2006, from 8.68 million to 13.11 million unique visitors.
In October 2007, Facebook had 19.5 million unique visitors. By December 2007, Facebook logged 22.6 million unique visitors, representing growth of 16%.
Overall, growth in the number of unique visitors to Facebook has been impressive. For example, in the one-year period from Oct 2006-Oct 2007, the number of unique visitors to Facebook jumped more than 125% (from 8.68 million to 19.5 million).
However, growth in visitors is clearly slowing down: in the third quarter of 2007 (July-August-September), the number of unique visitors to Facebook was steady, averaging around 19 million each month. December 07 brought a bit of a bump, but it's reasonable to wonder:
Has Facebook peaked?
19 comments ↓
Well, I am not sure FB has “peaked” — With another game changing move, launched on friday (where they released their public Javascript API) — allowing develpers to embed javascript FB components into their _own_ website/tools.
Their first big move and a big differentiator was their launch of the developer API — now with this second move I think this will give them another shot in the arm.
Finally, if you see Bebo is following in FB’s footsteps — with their launch of a FB compatible API.
My $.02
PS: I think eLab should develop a social-app on FB and measure “viral” spread. The next frontier of “Word-of-Mouth” research.
-v
Facebook is certainly possible, but one hypothesis is that while Facebook usage among current users continues to deepen, growth from new users is slowing considerably. In that sense, Facebook may be hitting a wall.
I viewed a report on the today show in January of this year that many professionals have used Facebook and other similar sites to land jobs. Many have had success by posting a very attractive and eye catching profile and then joining several groups they are interested in.
Once joining these groups members then connected with other professionals that were in businesses they were attracted to. The report said many Facebook members landed jobs by connecting to these professionals and establishing a strong connection.
I clearly saw this as a way for Facebook and other similar sites to grow and gain membership. However, In the past few months I have been absolutely bombarded with emails to join this site and that site that are all similar to Facebook and Linkedin.
As a real estate Broker I compare it to all the real estate portals that are out there like Trulia, Zillow, Google base for real estate, Yahoo real estate, etc.
There are only so many hours in the day for most people and the endless sites that are popping up is enough to make most people dizzy. If it keeps going in this direction one would need to hire a full time assistant just to post information on all these sites!
I agree with George. Maybe the reason behind the slow down in growth on Facebook is because all of the other social networking sites that are available.
I predict that social networking sites will eventually go the way of the search engine. Early on there were numerous search engines and today the internet search business is owned by Google and Yahoo.
The growth may have slowed down a bit but I see it as a steadfast part of my business now. Many professionals are using this as a networking tool and it is working quite well. It might have leveled off for now, but it will gain ground again.
I also agree with George. As a REALTOR I use the Internet to network with other Internet savvy agents (and maybe to meet an actual client on one of these social networking sites). But with so many new ones I simply can’t keep up, nor can I go back to some of these sites to learn the new stuff they introduce.
I know a lot of marketers are moving onto Facebook now as an augmentation to email lists.
John Reese just started an experiment of getting to 5000 friends (the FB limit) which he acheived in less that a week. More interesting will be what is to come from the experiment.
Kind Regards,
Shane
As an early myspace user, I hjave some comments:
1. the experience does get a bit old. I think part of the social networking phenomenon is simly people being enthustastic and overactive, and then slowing down. After you have met some new “Friends” it gets repetitive. We’re conditioned to move on, short attention spans…
2. As to APIs and business value… what is the grand scheme? Users can connect to their facebook IDs, and get their activity track outside of Facebook? Like the identity breach by Facebook last year was not bad enough, this is even more big brotherish. I don’t want other websites to report my activity back to Facebook, I really don’t.
3. I have a Facebook identity. Myspace is more fun, there’s music, the ability to customize things more, it has artists on it… Facebook is far more boring. In my opinion. It does not allow people to personalize their profiles half as much. So perhaps it is more about the networking element, but it also betrays and tries to clumsily pimp users’ networking tracks.
I think Myspace is innocent fun. Facebook has become a blatant attempt to “monetize” the experience of social nets by big brother and corporate america. With $250M in from Microsoft that have bought early employees, heck, I don’t trust their Web 2.0 affiliation.
My first venture into social media was MySpace. My high school daughter’s friends became my friends. I moved into Facebook. My daughter’s friends - now in college - became my friends.
Not exactly the professional networking I had in mind. And yet, many of my colleagues in real estate have connected with me on Facebook. They are much more centered on updating than I am.
Facebook is just too clunky for me to use on a regular basis. Today, it’s Twitter and Linked-in for me.
I think facebook has a long way to go still. Myspace is going down in quality and Facebook is still going up. Many people are not comfortable on myspace because of the sexual adds and poor quality of layouts, it has become a place for the younger crowd. Facebook is more mature and heading in more of the direction that is required for growth.
The reign of facebook has only begun.
I think Facebook is fantastic. It has allowed me to keep in contact with people I had not seen since graduation and now we can immeditaley update each other as to what we are doing. Is it a good business tool? That is yet to be seen
Facebook as a business component Could be..could be..huge. It will have to be easier to use,provide a twitter-like component, but I don’t know how they will monetize it.
With the proliferation of social media sites, FB membership was bound to slow. Many technology oriented real estate professionals see FB as a place to be seen, but only one of many and probably won’t spend much time there.
I guess I was wrong, dang.
I believe for facebook, brite kite, and every other social media platform to succeed is for them to converge…use them all across the different platforms.
According to a press release from SoftBank Mobile, the Japanese service provider has secured an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to Japan this year. The deal will ensure the iPhone’s first official access in Japan’s market.
I would love to get more acquainted with Facebook as a business tool, but I just don’t like it as much as some of the other social networking sites out there. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but it’s just so vague.
Plus, I’ve been bitten by vampires and had sheep thrown at me? I’m not sure there is enough structure there for me to see any value in it as a business tool.
I have used Facebook but it’s hard to keep up with all the new add-ons between the vampires, the wall, the owned photos, and drinks it can be too much at times. I use the Facebook market for my listings but I haven’t seen any traffic from it. I keep trying but I’m not sure of the overall value to my business. It’s the same faces as other social network sites so it really has to have an added value.
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